MOVIE NEWS – Netflix’s first summary report reveals that Jennifer Lopez’s new blockbuster action thriller was the number one movie between January and June 2023.

The Mother turned out to be a massive hit for Netflix. The action film, written by Mulan (2020) director Niki Caro, stars Jennifer Lopez in the title role as an assassin fighting to protect her daughter, who was placed in foster care when her mother had to go into hiding. The project’s ensemble cast also included Joseph Fiennes, Lucy Paez, Omari Hardwick, Paul Raci and Gael García Bernal.

Netflix has just released its first Engagement Report, sharing viewership data for its content from January to June 2023.

Although The Mother was released in May, i.e. barely a month before the end of this period, it nevertheless became the most-viewed film of the first half of 2023 on the platform. Overall, it is the 14th most viewed title on said graph. With a total of 249.9 million watched hours! The film topped other blockbuster Netflix originals such as Extraction 2, You People and Luther: The Fallen Sun.

How did The Mother become such a hit?

One of the surprising things about The Mother’s streaming success is that the film’s reviews have ranged from mediocre to downright hostile. The film has a 43% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. On Metacritic, it received a similarly low score of 45 out of 100. Viewer ratings are more optimistic, but not significantly better. It has an average score of 62% on Rotten Tomatoes and 6.5 out of 10 on Metacritic.

However, several factors contributed to the film’s rise to the top of the list. The first was that the film was released on Mother’s Day weekend. While the film isn’t based around the holiday, the thematically appropriate title seems to have managed to attract Mother’s Day audiences in a way that the new releases Book Club: The Next Chapter and Hypnotic failed to do.

Perhaps this is also why the film accumulated so many hours before the June cutoff, despite other, earlier Netflix titles spending more time on the list.

In addition to the ratings over the holiday weekend, Jennifer Lopez’s name probably contributed to the Mother’s rise to the top. The actress is a well-known star who has been nominated for two Golden Globe Awards. But not since 1997’s Anakonda has he starred in a non-comic action film. After such a long time, the star’s return to the genre probably appealed to many viewers who are used to seeing her on stage or in other genres such as dramas and romantic comedies.

Source: Netflix